"Yes, my Lord."
"Open a channel to the Gael Warrior. They'll be interested in this."
"Ad tuum imperatum."
"And pass the word to my Guard. Have them ready to move... instantly!"
Aboard the nine ships of the squadron, frantic preparations for debarkation were well underway. Morganen was discussing the maneuvers Kendric was planning for the Warrior when Alec Munro reached him over the intercom. "Commander Morganen? Overlord Gracchi is on the port comm channel, asking for you."
Morganen and Kendric exchanged glances. "Go ahead and take it, Lenard. I'll listen in, but outside the vid pick-up."
He got out of the command seat and let Morganen take his place. A moment later, his main console screen was lit with Gracchi's face.
"This is Overlord Gracchi. I have news for you, Commander."
"Yes?" Morganen's voice was carefully neutral.
"As of 0930, Port local, a revolution has taken place on the planet below us. The citizens of Alba have risen against their masters in Balmarin and elsewhere. They have reportedly lynched Prime Minister Alisdair from an upstairs window of Government House.
"A spokesman for the revolutionaries met with Provisional Governor Malatya an hour later and swore allegiance to TOG. He has requested military help from TOG in establishing a free, people's government, under TOG direction."
"A TOG puppet, you mean..."
"I mean, Commander, that your pathetic mutiny can expect no support from other Albans. You are cut off and alone. I am giving you one last chance to surrender."
"What about our families?"
The face on the screen smiled. "I promise you that you will be reunited with your families very, very soon."
"We'll...we'll let you know."
"Do not think about it too long, Commander," Gracchi said as Morganen reached across to cut off the transmission. "You have one hour."
Kendric stepped into the screen's pick-up field before Morganen could complete his movement. "Gracchi!"
The Overlord blinked out from the screen for a long second before his eyes widened in recognition. "You! How in Caesar's name did you...?"
Kendric ignored the question. "Your ultimatum is too late, Gracchi. We are jumping outsystem. Now."
"To what purpose, Fraser? Your pathetic mutiny is pointless now. The Gael worlds are ours." The Overload raised his fist for emphasis. "Ours to do with as we please."
"Like Trothas? I'd be careful about that if I were you, Overlord. Destroying planets can get to be a habit. Won't your bosses start to get mighty upset at that sort of wastefulness, sooner or later!"
"I have only to declare those worlds in rebellion, Fraser."
"Then do so. We will not be here."
Kendric kept a mask of icy calm over his features. His guts, meanwhile, had turned to knots at the terrible danger he faced here. The safety of billions of people now depended on his skill at bluffing an opponent.
At Trothas V, he had been tormented by the knowledge that nothing he did or did not do could help save the inhabitants of that doomed world. Here, though, things were different. Overlord Gracchi—Carnifex the Butcher—was fully capable of reducing the Gael worlds to cinders one by one, if only to force Kendric's capitulation. How long would it take, with a large Imperial fleet bombarding Alba from orbit, before Kendric's own men lost the thrill of hero worship and turned against him, or else began to plead with him to surrender in order to spare further destruction of their world?
The only way that Kendric could see to keep Gracchi from carrying out his implied threat was to take the rebellious squadron outsystem as quickly as possible. As long as the squadron remained, Gracchi could justify destroying Alba and each of the other Gael worlds in turn. With the fleet gone, there would be no point. It wouldn't even serve as a "lesson" to other would-be rebels, which was the rationale for destroying Trothas and its people. A TOG-engineered coup had seized Alba's government and presumably the others. As yet, no one else in the Galaxy even knew of the Gael Squadron's mutiny. Even if they had, they would likely assume that it was an internal matter within the TOG fleet. Once the squadron had fled, the destruction of Alba could only hurt Gracchi and TOG.
That should leave the Gael worlds still safe.
Besides, once the squadron left the Argrian system, Kendric expected Overlord Gracchi to be in hot pursuit. Gracchi could read departure tracks as well as Kendric could, and he would guess that the squadron's goal was Greshem and the Aldeharan transports.
Thus Kendric had reasoned, both alone and during long hours of discussion with Morganen, MacCandless, and the others involved in their strategy sessions during a sleepless night. Reason alone could not quell the churning in Kendric's belly or in his thoughts, however. Reason could not necessarily outwit a man who had already killed billions a dozen times over. There was no guarantee at all that Carnifex was even capable of reason as Kendric understood the term.
"You cannot run." The Butcher's voice was as chilling as his words. "There is no sanctuary for you or your kind anywhere in this entire Galaxy. We will hunt you down." The face leaned closer to the screen, as if to better study Kendric and read the horror in his soul. "/ will hunt you down. You and everyone with you will die. I offer you this one chance. Surrender, now. Open your ships to my troops. I promise you and your people good treatment."
"As at Haetai-Aleph? Or as you promised at Trothas? I don't think so, Gracchi. You'll have to catch us first." Kendric broke the connection. Only then did his hands begin to shake. Morganen took him by the elbow. "Are you O.K., Skipper?"
"Fine, Lenard, fine. Thank you. But that man.. .Gods around us, the KessRith are more Human than he is!"
In the main corridor outside the station lock leading to the Gael Warrior's docking bows, men in armor moved. Most wore the white armor and utilitarian duraleath uniforms of Imperial Legionnaire Marines. They had abandoned their ceremonial laser pilums in favor of massive, heavy-charge power guns more suited to close combat in enclosed spaces.
The Centurion Maximus in charge of the operation opened his communicator link with the commanding legate. "All squads in position, sir! There is no indication of warning to the objective."
"Excellent. Hold your positions. Stand by." There was a long pause, while men sweated in armor, their recycled air grown rank with heat and fear. "Special Strike Team, attention to orders! Proceed with the attack! I say again...the attack is go!"
"Acknowledged!" The Centurion switched to his attack tactical frequency. "All units! It's go! Snipers, stand ready! Engineers, open the hatch!"
An engineer manipulated a control, and the hatch hissed open. Beyond, the transplex walls of the brow tube linking Alba Port with the main quarterdeck hatch on the Gael Warrior was visible. At the far end of the tunnel, two of the Gael Warrior's enlisted ratings stood sentry duty at the head of the brow, garbed in maintenance space suits and carrying power rifles from the ship's armory.
Two marine snipers waiting inside the hatch had acquired their targets before the hatch finished cycling open. Laser fire lanced from the station port, striking the Gaels' helmet visors. Neither man had a chance to even scream before flesh and bone, superheated until water flashed into steam, exploded silently inside their sealed helmets. Two bodies crumpled beside dropped powerguns, as Marines raced across the transparent tube bridge toward the Gael Warrior's main lock.
The hatch was closed and sealed, but the Marines were prepared. One carried a flat gray box sprouting a forest of electronic probes and leads, while the other used a hand-held scanner to trace circuits hidden beneath the Warrior's skin. The second Marine marked a spot on the hull next to the hatch, and the second positioned the box and clamped it down with magnetic locks.
It took ten seconds for the circuit reader to penetrate the hull metal, and for its small but single-minded computer brain to trace the hatch circuits and apply judiciously computed surges of power. The hatch hissed and slid aside. Beyond was the main airlock, the inner hatch braced open. Twent
y Imperial Marines were on the Gael Warrior's quarterdeck before the alarm could be sounded.
Alarms whooped through the battleship as a computer voice intoned, "Battle stations, battle stations" with the solemn delivery of an HV weather reporter.
Kendric studied his console monitor, which was displaying transmissions from a camera on the main deck. Morganen leaned over the arm of his chair, pointing.
"They've broken through from the quarterdeck," he said. "It's an all-out attack."
"Probably aimed at the bridge and engineering simultaneously,"
Kendric said. "Any reports of attacks on the other ships?"
"No, sir. I alerted them to what's happening, as you said."
"Good. You'd better get to the Combat Center, Len. We have an unorthodox debarkation to carry out!"
Preparations had long since been completed. Kendric regretted that the ships had been unable to take on additional stocks of missiles and other consumable supplies, but the squadron was fully provisioned, each ship able to maintain itself in space for at least two months.
Morganen hurried off, and Kendric watched the battle on the screen. It was an uneven fight, at best. The Gael Warrior's men had only rudimentary combat training, were unarmored, and carried relatively light weapons from the Warrior's small arsenal. The attackers were Legionnaire Marines—the best—superbly trained for shipboard operations, heavily armored, carrying massive power rifles that turned Human flesh into charred and smoking twistings with each direct hit. Having stormed the quarterdeck, they were holding that as their bridgehead. The Warrior's crew had sealed off all corridors leading to the quarterdeck, but the attackers were moving to breach sealed doors and penetrate the ship. They had used a thermal charge to melt through one door already, and Kendric could see them moving cautiously along Passageway 12 now, stepping cautiously past the burnt, still forms that had been Warrior crewmen.
He cursed under his breath. Things were happening too quickly!
"All departments report ready for space," Morganen's voice said in Kendric's ear. "I'm in the Combat Center. All hands report battle stations readiness."
"All systems ready for space," Logan reported from the engineering console. "You have full gravs when you want them, Captain."
"Very well," Kendric said. "Lieutenant Munro, pass the word to all ships. We will release simultaneously, on my word. Remind them... easy does it. We don't want to tear Alba Port to pieces."
"All ships report ready, Captain," Munro replied a moment later.
"Pass the word to all hands. We may lose pressure on the Main Deck. All hands, seal up!"
They would have donned their emergency pressure suits when battle stations had first been sounded. To cast off with the brow unsecured was a terrible risk, but to remain in place invited the Marines to take over the ship. The party he was watching on the screen was planting another thermal charge at a hatch. They were clearly heading toward the Engineering Decks.
The keening drone of the Warrior's grav generators rose in pitch. From somewhere below decks came the muted thunder of raw power cascading through the battleship's converters. On the screen, one of the
Marines paused, looking up. He gripped a companion's shoulder, gesturing.
"They know something's up," Morganen said. He was watching the same view on his own monitor display.
"They can hear the gravs warming up," Kendric replied. "All stations! Ready for emergency release! Communications, pass the count to all ships! Release in five... four... three... two... one... Now!" f
The electricity flowing through the magnetic clamps in the port berth assemblies was cut by override command from each ship. Lifeless, the big clamps swung free as the ships began sliding astern under gentle boosts from their maneuvering gravs.
Cables, moorings, and umbilicals still connecting the Gael Warrior to Alba Port tore free. Outside the hull, the transplex tube running from station lock to ship lock warped and trembled, its cargo of armored marines suddenly tumbling to the deck as the ship began moving. Twin blasts of air erupted from both locks, spilling atmosphere into space in gales of crystallizing ice, as armored shapes struggled and floundered in sudden, airless weightlessness.
On the Warrior, explosive decompression blasted Marine troopers off the quarterdeck, sending bodies pinwheeling out into space. For one sickening moment, the gravity fields of ship and station battled one another in a lurching series of stomach-twisting pulses. Then the Warrior was clear of the station's artificial gravity and sliding smoothly, aft first, into space.
Emergency seals dropped into place, isolating the now airless quarterdeck. Everywhere, Marines stopped what they were doing, looked at one another, and began laying aside their weapons. Isolated aboard an enemy warship, with no hope of reinforcements, surrender was their only alternative.
The loss of mass around the station's perimeter was uneven. Kendric studied the facility as it receded on the forward screen. After a moment, it was evident that the structure was tumbling now, though so slowly it was barely noticeable. Its TOG caretakers would have their hands full stabilizing it, but the problem was not dangerous. Good.
Each of the nine ships dropped free from the station, swung about, their noses aligned on an invisible point off past Alba. Kendric gave the command, and the Gael Warrior began to accelerate with the other ships of the squadron taking their cue from the battleship. Alba Port receded behind them, masked from view by the white plasma flares of their I-K drives.
"Reannruadh!" Coherent light pulsed between ships, bearing words and images. "This is Fraser, Gael Warrior!"
Iann Sinclair's face looked back at him from his console screen.
"Fleet Captain! It's good to have you back, sir!" Messages had been passed to the cruiser's captain during planning, but always by roundabout means. This was the first time Kendric had been able to directly communicate with any of the captains under his command.
"Thanks, Iann. It's good to be back. But now I'm leaving again. You are in command of the squadron."
Sinclair nodded. The plan had already been discussed, passed ship to ship in secret. "Right you are, sir. Just be sure you make rendezvous!"
"We'll be there if we can. If not, use your own judgement. But our people at Greshem must be rescued."
"Understood, sir."
"Carry on, then. Warrior out!"
The Gael Warrior had begun accelerating on the same path as the other eight vessels of the squadron, but now under Commander Logan's gentle urging, the battleship began to accelerate faster, harder, until she was pushing at full flank speed. Her path diverged from the course the other warships were following as well, angling in closer toward the smooth, pearl-and-blue curve of Alba.
Kendric was performing much the same maneuver as he had at Haetai-Aleph, swinging his ship in close to a planet in order to use the world's gravitation to whip him in, tight and close, just barely above atmosphere, then slingshot him out on a new and precisely determined course. He had worked out the details with MacCandless in Ops. By the time the battleship had emerged from behind Alba, she was travelling at better than twelve kilometers per second.
In less than an hour, the Gael Warrior would arrive in the vicinity of the TOG VLCA.
The mutiny within the Gael Squadron appears to be complete. The battleship seems to be shaping a course toward this facility. This may be my last transmission.
Still no word on whereabouts of Clarity.
—Decoded transmission to COMINT HQ, Cathandra, Source: Classified: Most Secret, 19 Oct 6830
The VLCA could see the battleship approaching, of course, but its crew could no do much about it. The facility carried two Gladius fighters and a menagerie of shuttles and service craft. The structure mounted seven batteries, each consisting of heavy mass drivers and laser cannon set in turrets with overlapping arcs of fire. Those weapons were situated so that at least three turrets would bear on any warship, no matter from which direction it approached.
The battleship bearing down on the
VLCA was not a single target, however. Nearly a thousand kilometers before the Warrior reached the VLCA's position, fighter after fighter began catapulting from her bays. The Gael Warrior was still under her full complement of seventy-two fighters, with the losses taken at Trothas only partially made up by four squadrons of Spiculums delivered shortly after Trothas.
There were more than enough fighters to saturate the station's defenses, however. Besides, as Elliot had mentioned to Morganen during their last meeting, most of the VLCA's military personnel had transferred to Alba Port weeks before. Those remaining were mostly Imperial or Gael civilians—technicians and staff—who had no particular desire to die for Caesar, no matter what the Prefect in command might say.
"Open a channel to the target, Mr. Munro."
"Channel open, Captain."
"Attention, VLCA Alba! This is the battleship Gael Warrior! You have thirty seconds to surrender, before we open fire!"
Seconds crawled, with no reply from the station.
On approaching the VLCA, Kendric had faced a choice between two courses of action. He could launch an all-out attack with the sole purpose of destroying the facility, or he could try to capture it. Though time was short, he'd decided to try to capture the station first, despite objections from his staff. An all-out battle would probably mean many casualties among the Warrior's fighters, plus the very real chance of damage to the Gael Warrior herself. Nor would they soon have an opportunity to repair such damage. There was a good chance that the VLCA would surrender when confronted by a battleship and nearly sixty fighters. If not, the attack-and-destroy option was still open.
Kendric knew that a battle also meant that the Warrior would not lie available when the rest of the squadron clashed with the watchdog cruisers in the outer system.
"Ops, Captain! Their flicker shields are going down!"
"Message on ship-to-ship," Munro added. "VLCA Alba wishes to surrender! They say they are swinging all weapons turrets around to bear on two-eight-zero degrees, plus twenty, well off our bearing, sir!"
Kendric's relaxed his nearly manic grip on the arms of his chair. Step one accomplished! "Tell them I'd like to speak with their commander."
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